1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of inspecting a substrate processing apparatus, and a storage medium storing an inspection program for executing the method, and more particularly to a method of inspecting a substrate processing apparatus that communicates with a host computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a semiconductor device manufacturing plant has provided therein a substrate processing apparatus that carries out etching on product wafers for semiconductor device manufacture, and a wafer supplying apparatus that supplies FOUPs (front opening unified pods), which are containers each housing a plurality of the product wafers, to the substrate processing apparatus. Moreover, such a plant also has provided therein a host computer (hereinafter merely referred to as the “host”) that controls operations of the substrate processing apparatus and the wafer supplying apparatus. The host coordinates operations between the substrate processing apparatus and the wafer supplying apparatus during semiconductor device manufacture.
The substrate processing apparatus is comprised of processing chambers (vacuum processing chambers), load lock chambers as transfer chambers each of which is connected to a corresponding one of the processing chambers, FOUP mounting stages on which FOUPs are mounted, and a loader unit as a transfer chamber that is disposed between the load lock chambers and the FOUP mounting stages. The substrate processing apparatus communicates with the host via a communication cable. Moreover, the wafer supplying apparatus is a mobile robot on which a FOUP can be mounted. The wafer supplying apparatus communicates with the host by wireless communication.
As the time elapses during operation of the substrate processing apparatus, particles become attached to the interior of each of the processing chambers, and due to the attached particles, the product wafer etching rate changes, or the amount of particles attached to the product wafers increases. After a predetermined operating time has elapsed, it is thus necessary to open a lid of the processing chamber, and clean the interior of the processing chamber by, for example, wet cleaning with alcohol.
In view of this, the host carries out management of the operating time of the substrate processing apparatus, and once a predetermined operating time has elapsed, issues an instruction to the substrate processing apparatus to shift into a maintenance mode for cleaning the interior of the processing chamber. Once the substrate processing apparatus has been shifted into the maintenance mode, cleaning of the interior of the processing chamber is carried out, and then after the cleaning, etching of product wafers is not recommenced immediately, but rather an inspection process for inspecting the substrate processing apparatus is first carried out. In particular, an inspection process carried out automatically by the substrate processing apparatus is referred to as an “automatic resetting process” (hereinafter referred to as “auto setup”), and a system is known in which a trigger for executing such auto setup (see, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2002-25878) is sent to the substrate processing apparatus from the host once a predetermined operating time has elapsed.
However, with such a substrate processing apparatus, conventionally there has been no communication between the host and the substrate processing apparatus during execution of the auto setup, and hence problems such as the following have arisen.
During the auto setup, inspection wafers different to the product wafers must be transferred into the substrate processing apparatus in accordance with the contents of the inspection of the substrate processing apparatus, but even if the host mistakenly supplies a FOUP housing product wafers to the substrate processing apparatus using the wafer supplying apparatus, the substrate processing apparatus will be unaware of the types of the wafers housed in the supplied FOUP. Product wafers will thus be transferred into the substrate processing apparatus during the auto setup.
Moreover, the contents of the inspection in the auto setup, i.e. the process contents (recipe), are managed by only the substrate processing apparatus, and hence the host is unaware of the contents of the inspection, and thus cannot supply to the substrate processing apparatus a FOUP housing inspection wafers corresponding to the contents of the inspection.
To solve these problems, hitherto it has been the case that operators are stationed at the host and the substrate processing apparatus respectively during the auto setup, and these operators coordinate with one another, deciding on the number and types of inspection wafers to be housed in a FOUP in accordance with the contents of the inspection of the substrate processing apparatus, and checking upon what inspection wafers are actually housed in the FOUP. There has thus been a problem of the execution of the auto setup requiring much operator labor time (man-hours).